Hot ticket

Date: January 25 2013

Craig Mathieson

The homecoming promises to be memorable for Brooklyn-based Sydney duo High Highs.

Chances are you did not see High Highs when they performed in Sydney in 2009. ''We played this very odd show at the Hopetoun and a warehouse party in Enmore,'' keyboard player Oli Chang says. ''If you were generous you would say we were unobtrusive.''

A lot has changed for Chang and vocalist-guitarist Jack Milas. When the Sydney expatriates, now based in Brooklyn with a worldwide record deal via Sony Music, return home next week, they'll be bringing an anticipated debut album with them as they perform as part of the Laneway Festival as well as headlining a show at Darlinghurst's Oxford Art Factory. Clearly, they are no longer unobtrusive.

''We've worked really hard at this, pushing each other for a while now to make sure we always had something to work towards and the momentum to get there,'' Chang says.

Brooklyn is just the latest stop in Chang's itinerant life. Born in Castlecrag on Sydney's lower north shore, he moved around Asia with his parents from ages eight through 19, making new friends every few years but taking a love of music with him. A nearly finished music degree at the University of Western Sydney and the diversion of parenthood eventually led to Chang working at a music production company where he met, and bonded, with Milas.

The singer came from an acoustic folk background, while Chang's tastes ran to mellow electronic textures, but after some strange initial compositions they clicked so thoroughly as High Highs that when Milas headed for New York in 2009 it was agreed that Chang would follow within six months to pursue their lush, genre-mixing sound.

''I think of it more as being dreamlike,'' Chang says. ''We spend a lot of time making it sound purified and effortless.''

The ubiquitous blog attention for a 2011 EP was followed by a management deal with Elton John's Rocket Music, then the Sony deal and the Open Season album. And if it sounds like High Highs are getting everything they asked for, Chang knows why.

''I started doing goal setting and part of that was writing on a card everything you hoped would happen in the next year and everything on that card for 2011 and then 2012 have come true,'' he laughingly admits.

''It's freaking me out. I think I need to be more ambitious for 2013's card.''

HIGH HIGHS

Thursday, 8pm, Oxford Art Factory, 9332 3711, $31.20.

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